Food is not a moral choice

We need food. It's one of those base-of-the-pyramid things on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So why are we so messed up about it?

Women, especially, use interesting language when talking about food. We couch it in terms of sinning, being good, being tempted. We are back in the garden. Those guys who wrote the Bible should have had the snake offering up some chocolate or a really decent pastry.

I particularly loathe the Special K commercial where a woman is in a coffee shop exchanging lustful gazes with a pastry. If I gave my husband a look like that...Never mind. And then, after seducing the pastry for a bit, she gets her coffee. When asked if that's all, she now looks smugly at the pastry she was just undressing with her eyes and says, "No, thanks. I'm good." And tightens her belt as she drives her sugar/fat chastity home.

Good for you, commercial lady. Way to control your impulses while implying that everyone else who eats a pasty is going to burn in hell for their sins. The fat will help them really light up.

Food tastes good. That's how it gets us to eat it. Which we need to do to live. Yes, a lack of pastry never killed anyone. Nor is it advisable to gorge solely on pastry all the time. But a good pastry, once in awhile, is a wonderful sensory experience.

The sugar-free aspect of the Roller Derby Workout Challenge eating plan is interesting. I want to see if I can re-set my relationship with sugar. I don't think I'm a bad person when I eat too much sweet stuff. But I suspect that too much of it may be holding me back from achieving my athletic goals. But I'm not casting a puritanical eye on others' choices.

Don't even get me started on guys and food. Popular culture shows men engaging in heroic acts of bacon-related gluttony. (Don't get me wrong, I love Epic Mealtime as much as the next person.) So they don't get the same sin/redemption narrative, but they get fed stuff like yogurt is for chicks.

Let's not buy into the marketing. Let's eat what we love and eat what fuels us and try not to get to messed up about it.

Get thee behind me, unsupportive people

Day 4 of the RDWC eating plan. Still haven't managed to do the DVD. After having been out every night this week since Friday, I am officially exhausted.

People are funny, though, when they find out you're trying out a new lifestyle. My lunch is usually up for comment, but more so now. People keep trying to get me to eat candy. I really don't understand how people can spend so much time worrying about what others are up to.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Fatigue makes for a rambling writer.